Wabbit!

There’s a great farmer’s market right by our house every Saturday and we walk to it pretty often. It’s bountiful with veggies this time of year, but my favorite vendor is a ranch that sells trained horses and ranch dogs, and also offers their own ethically and sustainably-raised lamb, pork, duck eggs, and... rabbit. I pick up a rabbit every now and then and let Jonathan choose a recipe for me to cook it up. He brings over some local beer and we make an afternoon of it. Here’s the latest:

Rabbit Fricassee

Originally a French stew (etymology is debatable), it makes sense that fricassee is often Cajun-flavored when served in the U.S. This one builds off a flavorful roux and lots of Creole spices to make a bold, but not overpowering dish. Lot’s of tomato, garlic, onions, bell peppers, and celery are braised in the tasty sauce along with the rabbit. Very tasty, I served it over a simple rice pilaf.

A Phan Favorite

Forgive the Phan pun, but last night I made two of the top 10 dishes Charles Phan credits for his success- his spring rolls (which I’ve written about before) and...

Crispy Egg Noodles with Seafood
Fresh chow mein egg noodles deep fried briefly so they make a sort of crispy nest. That gets topped with stir fried onions, shiitakes, carrots, broccoli, squid, shrimp, and scallops, and a sort of light but flavorful Asian gravy made in the stir fry pan. You get a great mix of textures, especially because most of the noodles remain crispy but the ones at the bottom where the gravy collects get nice and tender.

Then this was a little bonus…

Fig Bars with Red Wine and Anise Seeds
Totally unrelated to our otherwise Vietnamese menu, Kara suggested this one for our guest, Nora, because she likes Fig Newtons (plus I've made it before and we love them, too). It’s tricker to prepare than you’d think, but the results are worth it. It’s a homemade grown-up version of Fig Newtons with a pie-like dough wrapped around the fig filling made in a red wine reduction with licoricey anise seeds. The recipe makes a lot, and luckily they are just as tasty for the next day or two.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

You may already know that we love celebrating holidays with matching food. And we love the history parts, too, so...

Cinco de Mayo celebrates a late 1800s Mexican victory in a seemingly impossible battle with the French army, who were better equipped, twice the size, and had not lost a fight in 50 years. The victory was short-lived and the holiday is not a national holiday in Mexico anymore, but has almost always been celebrated here in the States, especially in the last few decades... driven largely by beer sales.

So that’s why I made this food: Tex-Mex. This cuisine is one of the most uniquely American, and it took a food snob to accidentally give it respect. Diana Kennedy is a British-born woman who has dedicated most of her life to true Mexican cooking. She’s highly respected, but in the 70s she pointed out that the “Mexican” food being served in Texas was inauthentic, and this led to Tex-Mex finally receiving its own crown. Robb Walsh, one of the most renowned authorities on Tex-Mex puts it best:

We can all thank Diana Kennedy for inadvertently granting Tex-Mex its rightful place in food history. By convincing us that Tex-Mex wasn’t really Mexican food, she forced us to realize that it was something far more interesting: America’s oldest regional cuisine.

So, in honor of a Mexican holiday celebrated most prominently in the United States, this gringo made from scratch the very simple and classic…

Pico de Gallo

Tomatoes, red onions, garlic, cilantro

Mexican Rice

White rice stirred into cumin, and tomato-flavored onions, garlic, and cilantro, with a splash of lime

Refried Beans

Pintos soaked and cooked with salt pork and thrown into bacon fat with onions and garlic, and then smashed up with the cooking liquid

Beef Enchiladas

One major part of successful Tex-Mex is NOT using enchilada sauce, but chili gravy. As far as I know, you can’t just buy the proper Tex-Mex sauce for enchiladas in a can, but it’s pretty easy to make. Build a roux like you were making gravy, then add in cumin, chili powder, garlic, etc. It is not the red sauce from the grocery store or the chili sauce from south of the border, but it is what you get at almost every restaurant when you order “Mexican” food in Texas. This is key to Tex-Mex. (If you want to push it, you can use Velveeta instead of cheddar, but that’s a bit much for me.)

So there you have it. A perfect Cinco de Mayo meal, pictured here at my in-laws' house on a decorated Dixie paper plate in the Texas sun. Serious yum.